The Internet apparently can't stop talking about Attack on Titan. I've heard from waaaay too many people that it's basically the greatest thing since sliced bread. Youtube is full of silly videos putting the opening theme to silly scenes. It's a big fucking deal.
So I decided to watch the first three episodes to finally get an idea as to what all the hype's about. Now granted, I've learned that it's not always wise to judge an anime by the first few episodes (thank you, Madoka), but I'm... not too impressed. My thoughts will come after the break because they're spoilerific and also super-long.
The first two episodes tried and, in my opinion only barely succeeded in, setting an extremely bleak, hopeless tone. They established well enough that you don't wanna fuck with the titans, but since there was barely any time in episode 1 before shit started getting depressing we have no context to hold the bad things up against. Using the Madoka example from above, that story takes place in an easy, almost immediately identifiable and relatable setting (daily school life with your friends), so all of the bad shit that starts happening is made to seem that much worse in comparison. Even if it wasn't such an easily relatable setting, it spends a whole quarter of the anime establishing an overall positive mood. The Witch labyrinths were a little creepy, and Mami was quick to remind the girls that making their contracts was a really important decision, but it was still overall peaceful until Mami lost her head.
AoT, though, shows us the kids yelling at some guards (Eren has a serious fucking temper on him), then the Recon team or whatever breaks down in melodrama in the middle of the streets, and then the titans attack and eat Eren's mom. Then in episode 2, people keep dying and nothing's able to stop the titans and lots more bad shit happens. The setting is somewhat identifiable as a typical fantasy world, but there's enough different about it with the enormous, titan-dwarfing walls and their weird Spiderman gear and such that we never got a chance to establish and relate to the peace that was shattered by the giant titan.
Then comes episode three. After two episodes dedicated to bitter hopelessness, suddenly they're trying to add comedy with the Potato Girl and Eren's comical failure, and the asshole guy losing his faith in humanity, but none of it quite fits. There's a right way and a wrong way to work with mood whiplash, and though I can't specify what AoT does wrong compared to what Madoka did right, I seriously feel that AoT is doing it all wrong here.
Then we've got the characters. Eren is some sort of deconstruction of the typical anime Determinator, trying to accomplish what he should by all rights be unable to through sheer force of will, but since his only motivation is hatred towards something he doesn't understand he comes across more as a psychopathic murderer. That could end up being quite intentional, so I'm not discounting it just yet, but as it is right now I just feel they're trying and failing to use a common anime trope to define their character. Maybe it would be more apparent if Eren had done anything other than react to his situation. Choosing to join the military was proactive, but even that was just spurred on by his (admittedly justified) knee-jerk hatred of the titans. He has almost no personality right now. He was a kinda bratty kid who regularly assaulted adults who shared opinions he didn't agree with, he saw his mom get eaten, and now he wants to commit genocide. He's... not very likable, IMO.
Then there's the little blonde shit whose name I can't remember because he's completely pointless so far. It was something starting with an 'A'. We barely even know who he is. He's some dude Eren and Mikasa (who we also don't know shit about yet) know, and he joined the army because they did and because some nice old guy gave him a hat and then died. He hasn't done a goddamn thing yet, and I also just have this irrational dislike for him so I won't judge him too harshly. I doubt I could fairly assess his character even if I did think he has one.
Mikasa is the only character I really like (aside from Potato Girl, but she just doesn't even feel like she belongs in this universe), and I barely even like her. Why? Because we barely know shit about her. She knew Eren somehow, is implied to be some sort of a sisterly figure to him, and is determined to keep him safe. Or maybe she actually is his sister, but they never explicitly said that, and she said that he should "tell his dad" that he was crying which implies that he's not her dad, and she doesn't really look like one of the family members. So I'm gonna assume that she's just close to them. The only reasons I really like her is because she actually seems like she has some depth. Eren is a murderous hate machine and Blondie is a piece of cardboard, but Mikasa is shown to care for Eren and respect his opinions so much that she cuts her hair at a moment's notice because he says it's too long, and tells him that even though she's obviously a natural fit for combat, she'll leave to go to the landfills with him without hesitation if he fails. It seems fairly obvious it's going to develop into a romantic interest of some sort, yes, but at least it's a hint at some room to develop at all. Why is she so dedicated to him? Does she have some reason? Did he do something way back when to help her? Show her some act of compassion, which will fester in her mind as she watches him commit a hateful genocide until she reminds him that even if he's doing the right thing he's becoming a monster in the process, leading to some possible character development not only for herself, but for the main character who I kinda dislike so far? She's nothing overly special, but she actually has some sort of potential beyond just going out and killing titans and shit like Eren is showing so far.
Another thing I dislike is how much it seems to be hammering in the "our little tiny group of main characters have to take on the entire world!" sort of conflict. Half the people who are assholes to them come across as just being dicks for the sake of being dicks and giving Eren more fuel for his righteous fucking fury. A soldier in the inner wall complains, loudly and in hearing distance for our main characters, that the titans should have eaten more people to help the food shortage. Half of the kids in the training camp turn into utter, unhelpful assholes when Eren asks for help even though he was being pretty amiable and friendly with them, giving him more motivation to prove them all wrong and go commit a hatred-fueled genocide against an entire race of creatures.
I really just can't let that whole genocide thing through. Genocide is usually a bad thing.
That said, it isn't all that bad, and for all of my wall of text ranting about it (which was much longer than I intended it to be, by the way) I did enjoy myself enough to want to keep watching. The world itself is interesting enough, and I look forward to hopefully learning more about the titans themselves. I wanna know where they came from, why they're here, whether they're actually as mindless as the look or not. I wanna know what the deal is with the giant muscle-and-bone titan, and the armored one that facefucked the big gate. I'm also curious to see just what Eren's dad's involvement is in all this, since it's been heavily hinted that he's a very important character who knows a lot about what's going on.
The art is memorable, even if the bug-eyed look they get when they're feeling intense emotions really bugs me. The titans' weirdly wide smiles do a good job of just making them seem familiar in form, but repulsive, and the super-titans' appearances are distinct enough to set them out from the other titans without losing the key features that make them seem titan, like the giant one's smile that goes pretty much all the way across his face.
The weird Spiderman gear and the uniforms the soldiers wear are nice to look at, and I'm glad they're actually sort of teaching us about them and how they work as our characters get trained in their use. The Spiderman shit is the sort of thing you don't often see in combat-centered anime like this, and it's a clever way for humans who haven't progressed as technologically as us and who have no fighter jets to actually fight on the scale of the titans.
The soundtrack is pretty nice too, with the opening theme of course being the standout. I've yet to hear anything truly ear-catching yet aside from that, but I've yet to have any sort of big problem with the music.
So yeah. It took 1/4 of Madoka's runtime to even show us the real ending credits theme, so I know just how easily an anime can make a complete turnaround and go from adequate to amazing, so I know better than to judge a ~25 episode show by the first three, but I really hope it picks up in the later episodes and the characters actually start to be... you know. Characters. And that we don't get disappointed and never learn much about the titans. As everything is right now, I'm just not seeing what all the hype is about.
So, same deal as it always has been with my posts. Feel free to comment, voice your opinions, debate with me, or call me a whore and bite your thumbs at me for daring to criticize your favorite anime. I'll try my best to reply to everything.
- Xort
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